EA teams with IDW to release Army of Two and Dragon Agecomic books under the EA Games imprint, with talent like Peter Milligan, Humberto Ramos, and Orson Scott Card already signed on.

This isn't your average video game comic book deal. The agreement between EA and publisher IDW actually creates a separate imprint, EA Comics, with EA handling all creative aspects and IDW in charge of printing and distribution to both retail and digital outlets.

"We've seen an increasing number of video game tie-ins with comics over the last few years. This marks another step in our strategy for extending EA's wholly-owned game properties to new media. It is exhilarating to be working with the comic book creators directly," said Mike Quigley, Group Vice President, Global Marketing, EA Games Label.

The first book is Army of Two, kicking off in January of next year with a story that follows Salem and Rios after the events of the first game, forming their own Private Military Corporation. The story is written by Peter Milligan of Hellblazer, X-men, and X-Statix fame, with interiors by Dexter Soy and covers by Chester Ocampo.

Details on the Dragon Age comic are still being ironed out, though they've got a cover artist in Humberto Ramos and a writer in the form of acclaimed (and in some cases reviled) science fiction author Orson Scott Card.

It looks like EA is taking the comics business extremely seriously, calling out the big guns and creating its very own imprint. It should be interesting to see how such big-name talent handles video game comics.